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Get a seat at the table and build the design career you want. This podcast is for designers looking to break in, level up, and take control of their careers—whether you're freelancing, climbing the corporate ladder, or just trying to get noticed. Every two weeks, we dive into career fundamentals, design best practices, and the hottest topics in the design community.
Obsessed with, you know, animation. And they also went to the Apple website, and they were like, look how cool this is. We want this for our website too. They asked they asked for my advice. Like, should we do this?
Nick:Yes or no? And now is it easy to do? Like, what what would you recommend them if if you run a business, you run an agency? Like, what level of animation do you We are kind of live now. This is I always wanted to say.
Nick:We are live.
Tyler:And we're officially live. We are
Nick:officially live. Exactly. I mean, this is just an experiment.
Tyler:How's it
Nick:going, Nick? We are. It's going well. How are you?
Tyler:I'm good. Good. How was the weekend? Happy New Week.
Nick:Well, very happy New Week, for sure. Yeah. Project I've been stuck on for a while. I was finally able, you know, this morning to unstuck it, which is a wonderful, wonderful moment for for myself and for the client as well. So all good feelings here.
Nick:How about you?
Tyler:Good. Good. It was a it's been rainy for the last couple actually, over a week now. And then it's sunny this week, so I'm I'm a happy boy. I'm a happy boy.
Nick:Well, that's a rare occurrence in Canada is what the the TV shows and movies tell me at least. I'm not sure how
Tyler:true that is. If you're going by the movies, then we we all live in paradise. Not the case, but the rainy season seems to have extended. But I've been dying to do some gardening in the backyard, so that's been delayed. But we're back
Nick:But that's too bad.
Tyler:We're back at it. Yeah.
Nick:Yeah. Well, it's it's been the opposite here. We had, I think, a twenty six days streak of no rain, which sounds wonderful, and it is as a person. But then we also had a lot of, you know, dry grounds and and that kind of stuff, you know, which is bad for gardens and drink water quality and all all that kind of stuff. So but now it's raining.
Nick:So we're all happy that it is raining, which is the opposite of of your situation. But maybe we shouldn't bother or bore our our listeners too much with rain and that kind of stuff.
Tyler:Oh, it's you don't find it exciting.
Nick:Yeah. Alright. Well, you know, today, I I was you know, my my suggestion for topic for this week was motion and animation in projects, websites, portfolios. I'm curious what you think about you know, is it overdone? Do we make things too like, are we moving things too much, not enough?
Nick:Do we have, you know, banner blindness, you know, from back in the nineties, but then for animations? Yeah. What do you think?
Tyler:Yeah. I think with any new tool I think animation is becoming more accessible with, like, the new tools that we're using. So with any new tool, it's the we're we're often overusing it just because it's this shiny new thing. So, like, using it for everything, page transitions, scrolling effects, parallax. But I think there's a happy there's probably a happy medium.
Tyler:For portfolio websites, I just I think you should be focusing on the content, not how fancy your transitions are. I don't think we're hiring you for your transitions. Yeah. But I'm I'm always a fan of micro interactions. So, like, the subtle things that you as a user would never even pick up.
Tyler:Yeah. But just that slight transition, the the burger icon that switches to an x when you open the menu, that little delightful thing. Just subtle things that reinforce, like, the experience that you're going through versus being bombarded with these bunch of sliders, motions, transitions that are just, I think, overwhelming and distract from the main goal. Yeah. Here's what you think.
Tyler:Yeah.
Nick:Well, I I like the the subtlety, the one you're mentioning. If you go to the Stripe website, then you have dashboard with an arrow without a stem. But then when you offer it, it extends to be to become a full arrow. Like, that little thing is is very nice. And it's also it can be a guidance for users.
Nick:For example, I I designed a an onboarding experience for a startup, and then, you know, imagine you've done five or six steps. You're finally done, and then you are dropped on the dashboard for the first time. And that's a big transition, you know, design wise. You go from more of a wizard type experience, you know, lots of white space, one question per screen. And then suddenly, you see tables everywhere and empty states and buttons and all all it can go in so many different directions suddenly.
Nick:But then the thing we want people to click on, like, it has little wiggle. Like, hey. You need to be here. You know? I think that's a nice little touch just to grab the attention from a user that's potentially overwhelmed because of the all the change.
Nick:I like I like that type of animation.
Tyler:Well, plus you're also, like, navigating them from, like, a heavily transition heavy, like, onboarding flow. It's like, okay. I mean, I'm still in that state. There's an there's something wiggling that's getting my attention. So it's less of a to your point, like, a stark, okay.
Tyler:Onboarding dashboard metrics. Let's go.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That I I I think that's a good reason to have some animation in your in your product design. And, you know, it's in some cases, I think the the the big over the top animation works, but mostly for landing pages for, you know, an intro, you know, just that first little little wow moment, but not for a full page.
Nick:Like, if you animate the whole thing, you might as well not animate at all. Like, then it loses its its value if it's everywhere.
Tyler:Yeah. Exactly. I see it. Like, I think animations in the hero are, like, that that fading into welcome to the website. It's super super nice to see.
Tyler:But as you're if you're scrolling and then have little things that come out, it's cool for, like, maybe, like, a marketing agency or some kind of, like, over the top brand. But, like, the purpose of a site is to get me to go somewhere or, like, to to feed me to, like, a a form, have me sign up. And if I'm distracted by the animations and not reading the copy that's on on that landing page, then we've missed the mark somewhere.
Nick:Yeah. Well, that's true. So would you say that animation is something that happens in between reading, but you shouldn't animate something that should be read?
Tyler:Don't think you should be animating. Like, if you're reading, I shouldn't be distracted by an animation, I feel. Yeah. So, like, you can imagine, like, a two column layout. You have some copy, and then you have an image.
Tyler:That thing's bouncing and buzzing. Yeah. I'm not I'm not reading the copy of that issue.
Nick:No. That's true. Then if you would go from that section to another one, then it can animate out of view, and then the new one can animate into view. And once it's in view, it should stay still.
Tyler:Yeah. Exactly. So you can have like, during the transitions, this image move from this section to the next thing. You can rotate in three d, do all the flips you want, and then it should pause so I can so I can read what's going on.
Nick:Yeah. That's true. That's true. I do like animations for for, you know, hover states and and buttons and that kind of thing. You know, I when you hover a button, it it can rotate a little bit, or it can start, you know, appear to float, that kind of thing.
Tyler:Yeah. But I think, yeah, I think transitions are great. Like, button hovers, obviously. Like, I know that I can click it. Like, give me that extra interaction and not that flat click.
Tyler:I don't know what happened. So I like, the part of that is accessibility. So, like, making sure that it looks like I'm able to interact with, like, these buttons or these links. So, like, simple, just, like, text link. The the underline disappears or appears.
Tyler:You get fancy by kind of playing with the transitions. Yeah. But some of that is kind of, like, UX focused, so you're kind of communicating that something's you can't interact with it, and it's doing its next actions. Hover Yeah. Active, pressed, etcetera.
Nick:Yeah. What do you think about, you know, Apple product websites? And if you would go to the Mac mini page, like, there's so much animation going on and also with the custom scrolling. I never make it to the end of the page, personally. But
Tyler:Yeah. Yeah. I think they're just shot they're showing off their shiny new thing. I don't think anyone's reading the text specs. I think I think it's a it might be a different audience.
Tyler:We want the shiny. There's There's there's an iPhone that comes out every year, or maybe they've spaced it out every two years now, but, like, their customers want the newest version. It's basically them to end. Like, here. Here's the new thing, and we'll have it do gymnastics to get you to buy it.
Nick:Yeah. Well, that's that's perhaps a good UX kind of lesson that when some when someone goes to your website and they already know what they want more or less, you know, like Mhmm. Your example, like, new iPhone, perhaps them being able to read isn't as important as, you know, wowing them with all the movement and rotating the phone and and being all about, like, look at the shiny objects. Mhmm. You know?
Nick:So maybe the lesson then being understand with what type of intent someone is on your website. Mhmm.
Tyler:Yeah. Like, for the Apple example, I think it's what they've done is essentially just made a website into a commercial that you can interact with. That's a good one. If you've seen their videos, they they they mimic the same experience on their website. So Yeah.
Tyler:But the difference is you're able to kind of interact with it and scroll down and see. It's rotating it to see how many ports they have. Is it USB c? How many USB c ports? Whatever whatever it is you're you're purchasing.
Tyler:I'm Yeah. A whole big fan of the Mac Mini myself. But Yeah.
Nick:Me too. It's, something I have to, stop myself from buying.
Tyler:I don't think it is. So accessible. Like, the price point is so low. It's like, oh Yeah. It's powerful, and it's not super expensive as compared to, like, a MacBook Pro or Aravind Pro.
Nick:Yeah. That's true. That's true. And we all already have a monitor, a keyboard, and a mouse, so you don't need any of the extra things. But I've been able to hold it off for now.
Nick:I'm still looking at my MacBook Pro m one.
Tyler:Okay. It does the job. Right?
Nick:It does job. It's I I don't notice any slowing down.
Tyler:Yeah. Well, I can't imagine you doing anything, like, three d rendering or video editing.
Nick:So Well, I used to. I used to. You know? I think about a year ago, I did my last video for a in a different type of client, you know, podcaster, YouTuber. So I did a lot of editing for him.
Nick:But then I think, you know, it the benefits from going from m one to an m four Mac mini or or whatever type of Mac is basically just the rendering at the end. Instead of taking fourteen minutes, it will take eleven minutes. And I don't mind that too much, you the fourteen minutes. I'm not going to buy a new computer just to shave off three minutes, but I would buy the new computer just because it's super cool and tiny and and powerful. You know?
Nick:Yes. And then perhaps, you know, just to bring it back to the animation, if I'm like, wow. That's cool on the website, I think I will naturally relate the wow. That's cool on the website to wow. That's cool in real life, so I must have it.
Tyler:Of course. I'm curious. You mentioned, though, that you you were doing YouTube editing. How does, like, motion play a factor in those types of videos?
Nick:Well, I I made custom transitions, and we're back again with transitions, just like you mentioned a few minutes ago. You know, this person had a thirty to six sixty second intro. They're just announcing the guest and announcing the topic and that kind of thing. And then it would transition right to the the hey. Welcome to the show type of intro, beyond the intro.
Nick:That transition was fully custom with, you know, his branding color, his logo being animated, that kind of thing. And then for certain guests, I would have a custom animation for the custom animation, you know, and names popping in and out and that kind of stuff. So motion was a big part of the show, but not as much as some people in some shows. Like, it's not. It wasn't on YouTube type speed, you know, short attention spans, shorts, and cutting out all the the ums and that kind of thing.
Nick:So it was slow watching on purpose, and that naturally means that there's you know, slow motion on purpose as well.
Tyler:Okay. I can imagine slow motion meaning we're slowing down to, like, minus five x.
Nick:Yeah. No. And then I I it came out of my mouth, and I was like, that's something that would probably sound a bit strange.
Tyler:Nice watch that that video.
Nick:No. It's just yeah. Maybe that's one of the the tips and tricks for motion. Like, we're already talking about it a little bit, you know, that you have to match the type of motion to your desired goal type of audience. So for Apple, it's really, like, over the top super cool wow moments.
Nick:You mentioned websites where people have to read, Well, then it's, you know, just slow down. Let people read. And then you also have let let's say you're a marketing agency and you have a landing page, or you are a designer and you have a a portfolio page. I think both of those would require something in the middle between the two the two outer variants we we discussed so far. You know, portfolio can have a little bit of wowing.
Tyler:Yeah. Exactly. And I think for a product, I've been, like, I've been my what I usually do is, like, keep any animation to, like, 350 to be specific. That's very specific. It's very specific.
Tyler:It's it's subtle enough that you don't notice it, but if you pay attention, you will. But outside of that, I think animation within a platform, like, right, or a web app, like, loading states are super important. So if you're if you're loading anything over, like, ten, twenty seconds, first of all, hot tip, please don't use the spinning wheel. So I don't know what's happening. I'm a big fan of using some kind of, it's like animation, whether it's you're uploading a document, create a document, create a loading state, make a dense jump so, like, you're distracting it.
Tyler:Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm while I'm waiting these these thirty to to ten minutes to get my my result, I think it's great to kinda put some delightful moments. Yeah. So, again, I'm looking at that spinning wheel that that's super frustrating.
Nick:Yeah. Especially if it's just a spinning wheel without any words or a progress bar. You know, it's just spinning. I mean, it could have just as well been been timed out by that time. Like, you don't know if it's actually spinning, actually loading, or if it's just stuck.
Nick:Like, it's super frustrating.
Tyler:Yeah. I think I had project recently where it was about uploading a document and then using OCR. So using AI to basically extract the content from the document so it can inject into the application. And, like, the average time is around, like, thirty seconds to two minutes.
Nick:Yeah. So part of that,
Tyler:I had to kinda figure out a way to add a bit of patience to users. Basically, broke out the the loading into kinda three different stages. It's actually just mimicking or being transparent to what's happening in the background. So you can imagine, like, first, we're just analyzing your document. So you have, like
Nick:Mhmm.
Tyler:An icon with a little animation on it, little copy, title sub subtitles just explaining what's happening. So you're being transparent, educating, and also giving value to to the brand and also the the app that they're using. So it's not
Nick:like Yeah.
Tyler:We're doing this imaginary black box thing. We're telling you what's happening and then having a little loading bar. The caveat was that we didn't have, like, the constraint from the development point of view that we didn't have the progress. It was basically, like, a black box, but we knew what the average time to completion was. So, basically, we we essentially just ate the progress.
Tyler:Right. Average time of of processing time is around a minute and thirty seconds. 33.3% will be this first step, then the then the second, then the third. And we hope we get through all three steps, and then we'll we'll ex expose the extraction on the other end.
Nick:Well, that that's that's interesting, and and I think a place where a product designer can really make a difference. So for example, what do you do if it takes like, what do you show if it's taking longer than expected, but also what do you show if it's quicker than expected? Like, did you have any anything Yeah. I think Was it in your control?
Tyler:It's out of control. So so, like, the length of time really depends on, like, how many pages you're uploading, so the amount of content that you're having the AI extract. If it was quicker, I think it was fine. Like, we we have these three stages, but if you're still at stage one, it'll cut, then you to the next stage. The user doesn't care.
Tyler:Like, I'm getting to my end result. Yeah. This animation is just to get you to understand what's happening and then give you a bit of patience. Takes longer than essentially, what we did was, like, the last step is a bit longer, which is fine, but at least they've seen some progress. That little little bar goes from from zero to it's a 90 pauses there.
Tyler:And then once it's done, I'll trigger you to the next step.
Nick:Right. Okay. So it would stick around at 90% for a while.
Tyler:Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Nick:Yeah. And does it so and then once from the back end, it gets the flag like, hey. We're done. And it poof. It jumps to to 100.
Tyler:Exactly. You got it.
Nick:Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Also, you think Sorry? One more time?
Tyler:You also you also can make it programmally programmatically, however you say that word, dynamic. So if you see how that the average processing time moves up
Nick:or down, just to that calculation. So it gets better and more accurate over time. Nice. Makes me think about, like, the really old school Windows progress bar that would stick at 99% for forever.
Tyler:Yes.
Nick:And then or or at least in my experience, it felt like it would take forever, which is another UX challenge. Now you're talking about patience and, you know, making users wait and making it delightful enough or, you know, not frustrating for them to wait, which is quite challenging, I guess, especially with all the things that can go wrong while extracting data. Oh. You know? Like, if if it would take super long, like, would there appear anything?
Nick:Like, oops. It's taking a bit longer. Please hold or click here or something, or do they just have to wait?
Tyler:Yeah. I think in that case, you had, like, a max time limit. If if it goes over, like, five minutes, something's gone wrong. So you you just you you create that that edge case. If time is more than five minutes, cut through an error, ask them to try again.
Tyler:It could be or reach out to your customer success agent just so they're not stuck. So we either try again or they have some kind of solution based on the choices.
Nick:Yeah. But I think Did did you did you have anything to say about the the design of the animation? Like, was there any type of creative freedom, and what kind of tools did you use?
Tyler:I used what what did I use? Was it Jitter? Or it's one of those because I'm an After Effects person, and I have been. Not the greatest no. Not Lottie.
Tyler:I would I would love to use Lottie, but I think you have to install, like, the, like, the JavaScript files to kind of facilitate Lottie within your project and then it gets heavy, and it has an impact on on performance. So for this go around, it was it was the output was a GIF as rudimentary as it is, but the anime the colors in the animation was essentially it was basically a document with
Nick:like, a
Tyler:scanner out animation. So two colors. You have you don't you can't you you don't see the quality difference. You just have to export it at three x and then scale it down, and it looks it looks high res. Nice.
Tyler:I use I think I used a tool called Jitter. Yeah. I think that's the one. Super useful. You can quickly get you have, like, these presets, and you can get to where you need to.
Tyler:Nice. You don't have that fine control, but, like, you don't need it for some cases. And in this use in this use case, it's like, I have a file. I have the scanner bar thing that's in the PNG format. Make it go down and disappear.
Tyler:Sound good.
Nick:Yeah. Well, we're not making Pixar movies here. You know? It's okay to use a use a preset. You know?
Nick:It's Exactly. That's more than good enough. Yeah. So I I spoke to someone. Like, they they run an a marketing agency.
Nick:You know? They for their customers, they do advertising on social media, you know, and then really the AB testing there just to get as as much return on ad spent as possible. They were really obsessed with, you know, animation, and they also went to the Apple website, and they were like, look how cool this is. We want this for our website too. They asked they asked for my advice.
Nick:Like, should we do this? Yes or no? And how easy is it to do? Like, what would you recommend them if if you run a business, you run an agency? Like, what level of animation do you need?
Nick:Do you need to do lots with a big big I mean, with lots of wow effect, or do you need it to be subtle for them to read and and convert?
Tyler:Like For an agency site specifically?
Nick:Mhmm. Yeah. Or well, whenever you're selling something. It could be an agency. It could be you selling a course or a book or whatever, you know, from a seller's perspective.
Tyler:Yeah. The context matter. I think agencies, like their websites, get a lot you get a lot of leeway. Like, you're coming to them because they're they're seen as creative. That's what they deliver.
Tyler:So that's what I see a lot of agencies do. Like, instead of just a landing page, here's what we do at Hire Us. You wanna communicate, like, what your abilities are through your website. So it's it's it's more of like a portfolio. What I mean is a portfolio.
Tyler:Right? So you wanna show off what you're able to do so that if a customer's coming, you're like, oh, we want to do something exactly like it. They know already that you can do it.
Nick:Mhmm. Yeah.
Tyler:Yeah. Versus a course, like, I think it's you don't need that many that much different that that much animation. Just like, here's what I'm offering. Here here's here's the benefit to you. Here's the pain point that you have.
Tyler:Here's my remedy. Buy my buy my stuff. Give me money.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It feels like a whole different type of transaction. You know, if for a course, you're mostly taking away uncertainty for someone who's, you know, considering purchasing your products.
Nick:You know, you have to show social proof and perhaps give away a free chapter and tell something about yourself, you know, just to convince them that you are actually a designer, for example, not just someone trying to sell a course on how to make money selling courses, you know, that kind of thing. I see. Yeah. So that's that's much more you know, there's much more there's much more convincing involved, and that probably requires more reading and things being simpler. If you are a designer, you are offering your services.
Nick:I think then your portfolio is your first projects. Like you say, it's you have to show off a little bit. You have to show what you can do. If your if your website is unaligned and the the grids and layouts are all over the place, then that's not a good sign for you as a designer where you should be able to do that, you know, neatly. So, like and then on top of that foundation, if you can do, like, subtle animations and have a little bit of of wowing there, like, oh, that's nice.
Nick:I think that's that really helps. So I would say a designer is more in the upper end of, you know, the the spectrum of how much animation you should use on your website.
Tyler:Yeah. I think that's the burden that us designers have. It's like as opposed to, like, just like a a plumbing website where they're just, here's what I do have the services. We we are designers, and we we are, great at the craft. So part of that has to translate, to our our websites and our portfolio, which probably adds to the reason why it takes us forever to update our websites.
Tyler:Yeah. Because we have to we have to hit that bar.
Nick:Well, I've been working on my portfolio website for a while now. You know, for my Dutch version, at least, I have a new version life, which has, you know, a very basic level of animation.
Tyler:Well, first of all, round of applause for for pushing that line. It took me four years.
Nick:So, I mean, I I really had to because, you know, it it it still said I was 28, and I still said I lived in in a different city, which it wasn't true at all. I just wanted it to be up to date. And but I still have a list of, like, version 1.1 nice to haves, and about half of them are animations, just, you little offer interactions and that kind of thing. So it feels also, you know, from a practical standpoint, like, you know, done is better than perfect. I'd rather have my new content on the website first than if I have some time left over, which I never have, to be honest.
Nick:It's then it's it's time for some animation, I guess.
Tyler:Yeah. I think I agree with, like, done is always better than perfect. I had Yeah. I had a mentor session last well, yesterday, actually, doing she's redoing her portfolio, and then she's like, I'm using this this tool. Should I be using Webflow?
Tyler:Should I be using Framer? I have all the animations. Yeah. I'm like, first step, work on the content, and then Yeah. Make sure that that's solid.
Tyler:Get that out, and then you can start applying. Mhmm. And then you can do all the fanciness later because, like, I know s two well. Once you you have to learn a new tool and then you have to, like, oh, there's this thing. There's this thing, and it's that shiny object syndrome.
Tyler:And then you'll never get it out. You'll be working your portfolio for the rest of the year.
Nick:Yeah. Instead of showing it to hiring managers and potential clients, that kinda that that kinda good stuff.
Tyler:Exactly.
Nick:Yeah. Well, it's interesting that you mentioned mentoring. Like, is that a little side business of yours, like coaching and mentoring designers?
Tyler:Yeah. I've been doing it for free for it's like out of my goodwill and heart. So I mean, to be fair, like, when I it it just kinda pits home. When I when I first started my career I don't know if I mentioned this before, but when I first started, I think, four three or four months in, it was me and the senior designer at the time, and he had quit month three. So I had lost my mentor at my first job ever, and I was left to swim.
Tyler:Yeah. So with that, became, like, the theme of my my career left kind of swimming on my own. So I think back to our mentorship conversation, I think it's super important to get to give mentorship to junior designers who are trying to figure things out. They're taking boot camps, which kinda gives you, like, maybe 10% of the picture of how things are done. Yeah.
Tyler:You're not generally I think no. You're not generally starting a project from zero to one. You're maybe maybe it's fifty fifty. You're, like, jumping on a product that already exists. So it's there's no course for how to start how to start working on a on a on a part that's already 90% there, and you have to deal with, like, the the engineering constraints.
Tyler:The you can't redesign the whole thing because that's too expensive. The ROI is not there. True. True.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. No. That's that's very interesting and very true that, you know, Google UX course, for example, it's really about design thinking step one to five, like the whole thing. And then what you're saying is something I see as well.
Nick:You're always jumping in somewhere, you know, halfway through the process. Like, there's always some outdated piece of software already there. Yeah. But now I'm thinking that starting from scratch, even though that's what you're being taught, it's that's way harder. If there's nothing there, no process, no frameworks have been chosen yet, Like, there's literally nothing except for an idea.
Nick:Like, that's super tough to to work on as a designer. So that's that's not in boot camps either. Like, it's really theoretic. Like, here's design thinking. Here's the double diamond.
Nick:Mhmm. Yeah. And, also, you have
Tyler:to be aware of, like, the budget. So, like, generally, if you're starting something new, you don't have unlimited budget because it's not generating any revenue. So Yeah. You're starting off in the red. So it's Yeah.
Tyler:To your point, understanding what that MVP is and how can we quickly get something out to validate. Because it we can get I think designers can get very creative. It's like, oh, I wish if I had all the money in the world, this is how we design it. It has all these little micro interactions, these transitions.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. It could
Tyler:take a developer seven years to build.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then in in year two, they're out of a job because they're out of budget. Yeah.
Nick:Which is yeah. Well, that I mean, that's a good way to also see the animation stuff. Like, it's probably not part of an MVP, probably not something a startup would work on. You know? Not not not at first.
Nick:Tough one though? Thing sorry?
Tyler:That's a tough one though. Like, when when is animation part of the budget? Yeah. I feel like that's something you always have to, like, shoehorn in. It's just like, make sure you just just do it.
Tyler:Don't ask for permission because you're never gonna have a animation Yeah. Budget approved.
Nick:That's yeah. That's what I did for a project a while back. Yeah. Well, that's I think that's the the downside of, like, one of the most important skills of a designer. You know?
Nick:I think one of the biggest things to be able to do as designer is to be able to determine on your own, like, should I do this design? You know? Go go into this direction or into the other one? Like, what's important for the business now to help them survive? And let's say you go left, then the the idea on the right, it's put on a shelf somewhere.
Nick:But then the downside of that skill is to just forget everything you have lying around, being able to bring it back in and, you know, have it become a novel of a priority for founders and developers to actually work on is super tough. I haven't been able to do that consistently, You know? In most of my especially my corporate days, they abused the MVP words. You know? And then MVP normally means we do this first version and get feedback and improve it, but then they would change that to, well, let's make a crappy version and be done with it just to cut corners.
Tyler:Yeah. Right.
Nick:You know? And then they they never return to the things all the good ideas we have for version two. They just move on to an MVP of another feature. And then if you do that long enough, you have a very crappy product full of, you know, UX debt and technical debt. I mean, I don't have a solution for it right now, you know, because that's but that's very tough.
Nick:That's one of the things I would like to fix in, you know, lots of big projects.
Tyler:Yeah. What I've heard and I also use this term also, I don't use MVP. I use MLP, so, like, most lovable product. So it's not a bare minimum. So if you rebrand it, it's, like, not just the pieces that is needed to get this thing out.
Tyler:It's it's a first iteration that is also useful and is also loved by its consumers. Yeah. True. But also to your to your point about, like, how do we ever get back to the shipping and off to the next thing? I think that's where documentation comes into play.
Tyler:I think if you're generally, if you're building out a feature, there's things that are getting cut out. Like, here here's the ideal, but, actually, we don't have time. We're gonna go with this, to your point, this crappy thing. But if those if those extra things that were kind of left left out of that that initial push live, if you document them somewhere, they they never die because you've you're gonna forget about them unless you put them somewhere and put that in a place where, like, f one has access to.
Nick:I think that's documentation is worth it to be a topic of an episode all by itself, especially because now this this isn't the first time where you are a, you know, a salesperson of the documenting way of doing design. You know, you mentioned it earlier as well. So, yeah, I would personally be very interested to to see and hear more about it, especially because I hardly do any documenting myself. Not because I don't want to, but just because that's not really something, you know, coincidentally something projects I'm in is you know, it's not something they do. But perhaps that's something I can introduce to them.
Nick:So, yeah, perhaps at some point you can tell me more about it while we're recording, of course, so more people can hear about it.
Tyler:Yeah. I think it's super useful. And and to quote a famous man named Nick, if it's if it's not documented, does it really exist?
Nick:Is that is that is that something I said? I I don't remember.
Tyler:It was for a it was it was on another topic, but same frame.
Nick:Well, this this Nick person has all sorts of little wisdom nuggets.
Tyler:I think so.
Nick:Smart guy than Nick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so.
Nick:I I have maybe one more thing I wanted to mention. You you mentioned Plumber as an example of a more, you know, basic type website. You know, the the town where, like, one half my my mother's half of the family is from, they have or used to have a famous, like, cookie factory. And then, you know, it's a cookie. It's it's a flat waffle, and then they roll the waffle, and then they put stuff in the middle.
Nick:You know? If you go to their website, then the loading thing is a waffle. And then when you start scrolling, it rolls itself into the the final cookie, and then you can see the rest of the website. And then in that case, I think it's a fantastic use of of motion and animation because you're instantly, you want to buy the cookie because you see it being created on the website, and it's instantly creating a connection like, hey. That's look what they did.
Nick:That's exactly like it is in real life. So, you know, it's as boring as it gets, you know, plumbing, cookie factory, but then still you're on the edge of your seat on your website because of the website. Yeah. So maybe animation as an opening sequence for a landing page is a great emotional connector if you're selling a product.
Tyler:My saying that my head went into, like, how would that plumbing animation
Nick:transition come along? Toilets now. So Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Nick:And then I I just see I'm I'm just now seeing, like, this old school Mario, like, side side walker, you know, where it's you have, like, see through through the the pipes, and you can see a little dirt falling down. But that's perhaps not something to put on your landing page.
Tyler:If someone listening to this make that animation, I would love to see. Yeah.
Nick:Yeah. Yeah. I think I think they should and send it over here.
Tyler:Please.
Nick:Yeah. Alright. Well, I think I think I we're we're talk we've been able to talk more about animation than I thought was possible before this episode.
Tyler:Yeah. Good talk. I let well, I also love animation. So Yeah. Don't get to do it very often, but when I do, I get up.
Nick:Nice. Alright.
Tyler:What's next? We are, I think our our teaser for the next episode, we're gonna delve into the world the world of branding. Our our perceptions of branding and maybe different companies' execution of maybe a refresher brand. Couple examples that we've seen that have been in the news lately, I think we could touch on.
Nick:Mhmm. Also, things like name changing. Like, should you change your name? Is that a good idea? Yes or no?
Nick:And what's with companies changing the color of their logo and you know, from a yellow to a slightly darker yellow, for example?
Tyler:Very expensive change, I imagine.
Nick:But imagine
Tyler:for a
Nick:purpose. Yep. Oh, I I I think so. Also, that's going to be very interesting. I'm looking forward to discussing that with you already.
Tyler:Perfect. So I guess we'll see each other next time. And I'm gonna reintroduce the cringe. Please like and subscribe and share this content and hit the bell.
Nick:Yeah. Ding. We'll get used to saying that. Yeah. Ding.
Nick:See, I'm I'm doing the sound effects now. Like, you're yeah. You're you're you're doing the the cringe one liner. I'm doing the cringe sound effects.
Tyler:I'm gonna clip that thing you just did. That'll be our new shit.
Nick:There goes my trustworthiness. I'm slowly turning into a meme right now. Yeah. We're done. Well, that's it's one way to get famous.
Nick:It is. Alright. Well, that's it. Bye. Have a good one.